Parsing, using curl and xpath in PHP, an HTML page with before a form

Question

I'm using PHP and xpath to parse some HTML pages: in a previous issue (rif. Parsing an HTML page using curl and xpath in PHP), I've solved how to parse a page to extract some values.

Now I've another page in which, before to get the values I'd like to parse, I've to select a value (Venezia in the picture ..., in the combobox "Provincia" ... ), and then to click on a button ("CERCA" in the picture ...), before to get the values I'd like to parse (that are the numbers in red, green and yellow boxes in the page ....)

The url page is the follow

https://salute.regione.veneto.it/servizi/situazione-nei-pronto-soccorso

and here you're the image of the page after the selection and action described above

Is it possible, and how, in PHP, to simulate this HTML navigation sequence to obtain the HTML page than I've to parse?

nicolastorre · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-27 09:38:41Z

1

In PHP, you can use curl to post the data of the form at the same url that the form action: https://salute.regione.veneto.it/servizi/situazione-nei-pronto-soccorso?p_p_id=PRONTOSOCCORSO_WAR_portalprontosoccorso_INSTANCE_o0QZ&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=column-3&p_p_col_count=1

and get back the HTML page.

Example of php script, inspiré de https://davidwalsh.name/curl-post (you have to install curl to get working this example):

<?php

$url = 'https://salute.regione.veneto.it/servizi/situazione-nei-pronto-soccorso?p_p_id=PRONTOSOCCORSO_WAR_portalprontosoccorso_INSTANCE_o0QZ&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=column-3&p_p_col_count=1';

$fields = array(
    'ulss'           => '101',
    'provincia'      => 'BL',
    'nomPS'          => '',
    'rossoInAttesa'  => '',
    'gialloInAttesa' => '',
    'verdeInAttesa'  => '',
    'biancoInAttesa' => ''
);

//url-ify the data for the POST
$fields_string = "";
foreach($fields as $key=>$value) { 
    $fields_string .= $key.'='.$value.'&'; 
}

rtrim($fields_string, '&');

//open connection
$ch = curl_init();

//set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST, count($fields));
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $fields_string);
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);


//execute post
$result = curl_exec($ch);

file_put_contents('result_page.html', $result);

//close connection
curl_close($ch);

edited Feb 27, 2017 at 9:38

answered Feb 27, 2017 at 9:12

nicolastorre

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2 Comments

Cesare Over a year ago

Do you've a little sample on how to do it? I'm quite a newbye in PHP ... thanks! (anyway also your first suggestion on use PhantomJS could be interesting ... )

nicolastorre Over a year ago

If you are used with JS, phantomJS could be nice to do page automation but your question is about PHP so ;)

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